Electronic voting and ballot-counting techniques have recently been introduced. Electronic voting and ballot-counting techniques are not inherently difficult to perform, although problems relating to fair election, voter convenience, efficiency, system error, external intrusion, etc. need to be addressed.
For example, the U.S. presidential elections employ a touch screen-based direct recording electronic voting machine (DRE), a DRE with a voter-verified paper trail, a precinct counter optical scan, etc. In a general voting procedure, a voter goes to a polling place and obtains a smart card (granting voting rights) as a voucher for participation in voting. This smart card is used in voting and votes are stored in a memory of a voting machine. However, these techniques have the following disadvantages.
Software attack—Software embedded attacks may cause an error in a voting system without difficulty, and all types of electronic voting machines are vulnerable to this attack. In particular, for a DRE generating no paper ballot, parallel testing may be conducive to tracking not only software-based attacks but also any software bug not discovered during inspection or other tests.
Wireless attack—Wireless components of a voting machine are vulnerable to a wide range of attacks.
DRE generating no paper ballot—DREs having no voter-verified paper trail (VVPT) do not have any way of detecting software-based attacks. This is because an automatic routine audit of comparing a paper record to an electronic record after an election is impossible.
Ballot trail—The VVPT is considerably suspect in itself with regard to security. Paper records are reliable only when the automatic routine audit is performed. Also, a series of well-designed filing and physical security procedures has been established for paper ballots.